I met a fan artist from the Hobbit fandom who’s 40+ years old, who sent me a postcard a couple of years back for Christmas with her art on the card.
When I was about 14, I once befriended, and lost contact with, a 40 year old woman with a full head of gray, curly hair, who was one of the best known Good Omens fan artists of the community. She had apparently been in and out of asylums for years, and I worried for the longest time. I even sent her an email when I was around 18, asking after her well-being. But then she resurfaced when I was 21, here on tumblr. It was one of the greatest and most memorable fandom experiences I’ve ever had.
When I was 15 and using slurs I didn’t know were slurs, 30+ year old LGBTQ+ comics fans on scans_daily patiently but firmly corrected me. I felt mortified, but they never attacked me or treated me as anything other than a dumb kid who made a mistake.
I have a long time friend of close to a decade, who was late twenties when I met her in the comics fandom, and I was a teen.
OLDER FANS ARE CRUCIAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF FANDOMS. Not ONLY because they’re literally the ones keeping fandom afloat (AO3 wasn’t created or maintained by kids, let’s just say), but because older fans generally don’t attack or bully or fuck up a fandom by being aggressive or volatile or overzealous, destroying any enjoyment of a medium.
Single women, married women, LGBTQ+ fans, all in the range of 30-60 years old. I’ve met all sorts of older fans, from when I was 12 on deviantart to now, in my mid-twenties, and not a single one of them has ever hurt me or treated me like dirt. I’ve always felt safer with older fans than with younger ones, because of the people I’ve seen harass, accuse, doxx, bully, and generally engage in harmful behaviour in this fandom, they’ve largely been in the 13-21 age bracket.
Obviously most young fans aren’t like that, but the toxicity is palpable regardless.
@younger fans, if somebody older in a fandom acts in a creepy way, then feel free to avoid them, block them, report them.
But this apparent DELUSION that younger fans have that older fans are “creepy” just for existing needs to be eradicated. Just. Stop. You do not deserve the fandoms they built, they maintained, they keep alive in themselves and all the younger fans they took care of, if you cannot RESPECT THEM.
Tag: ageism in fandom
Oh. Hey. That’s another thing about ageism in fandom-
How many of you have looked around at the fic and art being created by your fellow fans and looked at your own and winced, wondering how all of these other people could be so GOOD AT IT, and whether or not you should just give up now ‘cause you “clearly” don’t have the same talent as they do?
Chances are, if you’re a teenager, the works you are looking at were created by someone six to fifteen years older than you. They probably fell into fandom at about your age, and the works they produced at that time probably looked a lot like the ones you’re making now. They aren’t naturally more talented than you- they’ve just been working at their craft for far longer.
KEEP THE PEN IN YOUR HAND. You can be as good, or better, than ANYONE you see out there. I promise you, anyone you’re a fan of had a point in their life where their work was far less impressive than yours. You just need time, and practice.
And remember, we love this stuff for the same reasons you love this stuff.
That’s why we’re here.
Exactly this.
The shit I wrote at age 15 was terrible, but I was enthused so I kept at it. And kept at it. And now I seem to have forgotten to stop.
Anyway: Keep writing. Get yourself a good beta and a good cheerleader. These can be both, but a good beta will make you be a *better* writer. If your writing doesn’t improve after six months, if they never point out any errors or things that need to be fixed at all and you’re still not happy with your writing, keep your cheerleader and find a better beta to match.
This. I cannot stress the importance of having a good beta. Even if you’re well past your teenage years, even if you’re been writing for a decade or more… having a second pair of eyes look at something before you post it can be the difference between someone reading and reccing your story, and hitting the back button because it hurts too much to make it past the first paragraph.
(Because yeah – in a lot of cases, I will totally “nope” out of a poorly edited story. Sorry.)
ALL OF THIS. So many of the people who go “wow, I can’t believe you’re still in fandom at your age, you clearly have no life” fail to realize that probably a lot of their favorite fics/fanart are created by people who are 30, 40, even 50+. People who have been doing this for years, plus have life experience to put into their work that teens or even 22-year-olds just don’t have yet. And have been actively working to improve over the years.
Yes, this! I’m in my mid-30s. I started writing when I was about nine years old, first wrote fanfic when I was 14, and have been in fandom continuously since I was 20. That is a lot of practice (and I look forward to getting decades more! :D)
Some of my favorite content creators have been in fandom since the 1970s and are still creating work. I’ve been in fandom since 1998 and refuse to stop, because fandom changed my life.
I started writing at 11, folks. None of it is on the web, nor gonna be. But you know, I put the first fanfics I wrote in my 20s out there and they’re still out there because they were the best I could do at the time. If you want to write it, write it. And if no one else likes it, as long as you do, at least one person does! TL;DR If you’re having fun, keep doing it!
Question of Smoke 